Unsaid Words Falling on Deaf Ears
by ohtobealady
Summary: Valentine's Contribution 2015, though it's not particularly sentimental. Based very loosely on "Have I Told You Lately" by Rod Stewart, this fic explores a pre-canon/headcanon idea. Robert & Cora travel to America to mourn for her Jewish father, leaving Downton with fresh scars of their own. Can Robert find his way to Cora through her grief? Does Cora want to be found? ANGST, ahoy
1. Chapter 1

The ocean was a flat, frosted blue expanse of nothing and everything, blending with the sky above it, drowning out any hope of land.

Cora stood at the railing of the ship, her hands gripping the freezing iron and her raven dress fluttering around her. She closed her eyes and let her hair tear loose of the pins her maid had taken so long to secure. Her cool brown curls blew straighter in the new year's cold gusts.

Home. She was going home, to a place she'd not been back to in a year's time. Only a girl when she left, only a child, really, she was coming home a married woman. A Viscountess, a century old wedding band glistening on her finger. She was going home again. Home. It was the place she had wished of, had dreamt about, had longed for these months and months. Only now, she didn't want to return. Only now, she didn't long to be home again. She didn't want to face what would be waiting for her there, or rather, who wouldn't be.

She opened her pale eyes in the wind and tears immediately came to them, the icy gusts stinging them in tandem with the burn she felt at the emotion now conjured. Her husband stood there behind her, motionless, quiet, as he had been since yesterday when she received word. She sensed his restlessness as he brought his coat more tightly around himself, obviously chilled to the bone.

"Cora, dear," he tried. "It's terribly cold."

Anger burned in her chest.

"Aren't you cold?"

Yes. Yes, she was, and had been, cold. So very, very cold. Robert seemed to keep everything so terribly, terribly cold.

"Let's go inside. Please."

Swallowing the sharp lump in her throat, it raw from the frigid air, she squared her jaw. "No."

"Cora-"

"No."

Silenced, her husband only stood idly by, the space between them frosting over.

Some very small part of her felt guilty, some more logical place in her mind told her that he was faultless, he was only protecting her, but that voice of reason was muffled and snuffed out by the emptiness she felt. The hollowness.

For the facts remained. They remained and listed themselves again and again in her mind. Frantic lists, staccato lists, perpetual lists.

They knew her father was going to die.

They knew how sick he was. Mother had telegrammed six weeks ago. In November. He was dying. He wasn't eating. He was frail. Cora must come, she must see him, Isidore asked after her. It would only take six days. She could be there in a week.

But Robert said no.

They knew and she had pleaded but he had said no. Robert had said no. They mustn't, she mustn't. Much careful, much care. It wouldn't be right to risk. She must think. It had taken so long, she must think. Even Violet had thought it safe. But Robert had not. And she hadn't gone. She hadn't gone and had lost it anyway.

It happened anyway.

Her knuckles grew whiter, bluer, as they held tighter to the icy metal.

She saw bright red. She saw so much bright red. Blinding, bleeding, red. Then four days following, there was Christmas. When they had planned to tell. It'd been safe then, to tell them all. To tell her father. He hadn't known. He'd been so pleased, so relieved. He'd known then, that it couldn't be true, that what he had said couldn't be true. But she didn't tell him. So he hadn't known. And now, three weeks later, he was gone.

He was gone, it was gone, and her life suddenly felt broken and shattered.

Cora's consciousness came back to present. She was suddenly hyper-aware of the subtle movement beneath her feet, the deep rumble of the boat, the nearly imperceptible sway of the sea. She was aware that she'd crossed her arms before her, holding herself much tighter, and feeling much warmer than moments before. Her fingers gripped, fingernails scratching against the black wool draped over her. It smelled of sweet tobacco, a cinnamon wood.

Robert's coat.

She turned her body around, her back to the blue, and looked. He was gone. Her hair lashed at her cold cheek, and it stung. It burned.

Taking in a deep breath, her lungs hurting in the chill, she carried herself inside and through the labyrinth of the cabins. She stopped at her own, and put her hand on the knob, knowing that just behind her, in the cabin directly opposite her own, Robert was there. Her chest clenched at the thought of him, and she frowned. Pushing open her door, she slammed it shut again after her. She tore his coat from her and threw it onto the chair in a corner.

She went to the case by the bed, and she dug through it. She found the creased, folded, yellow paper, and she brought it out again, clutching it in her fingers.

She sat upon the bed, and she unfolded it slowly, pulling her gaze across the words for the thousandth time.

_Isidore ben Aharon ha-Levi _STOP_ dead _STOP_ Tuesday 6 of Jan 1891 morn _STOP_ proper burial &amp; mourning _STOP_ come _STOP_ sitting shiva _STOP

She touched her father's name. His Hebrew name. She mouthed it.

Cora had only seen it written this way a few times in her life - very formal occasions only, never in business. To everyone he was Is Levinson. Is. Isi. Isidore when her mother was fussing, which was often. But very rarely was it this. She thought back to the last time she'd seen it this way, to Saba's funeral. Her grandfather. Her father's father.

She'd been twelve. They've traveled by train to Cincinnati, and they remained there for what, at the time, seemed like forever. She found it all so strange, so surreal at the time. Everything was dark, and covered. No one changed their clothes, or had proper baths. She clearly remembered how she stared at her grandmother, Savta, as she sat upon the floor.

"Sitting shiva," Aunt Ruth had whispered. "It's proper mourning, Cora. For us. For the Jewish."

But Cora wasn't Jewish, and she didn't understand it. All she understood was how important it was to her father. How there was a part of him that belonged solely to him, but that he had wanted to share. How, in sitting shiva for Saba, she'd known her father better. She'd seen her father, and she understood him, however little she understood his faith.

Now she was coming home, again, to sit shiva for him.

She rested on that thought for a moment. Two moments. Three.

Her father. The tall, burly man with round hazel eyes. The man who drank too much with dinner, who cursed and laughed too loudly with his business associates, who read so voraciously there weren't enough books to be bought. The man who woke her on her birthdays with one special gift, who lit a small Menorah amongst their Christmas decorations, who insisted on teaching Harold how to dance.

Another moment. Five. Six.

Her father. The father who had tried to hide his sorrow at her being engaged, who grew furious at the sight of her name on the entailing contract, who didn't speak to her the day of her wedding save for one thing. Save for one thing that he had whispered as he escorted her down the aisle of Robert's church.

"My lady?"

Cora closed her eyes harder, and nestled her head further into the pillow on which she had rested it. She did not respond to her maid.

"Lord Downton is asking after you. He wants to be sure you've eaten."

Cora briefly found the ticking mantelpiece and read the numbers. How had so many hours passed? How had so many hours passed since she came into her room?

" – you know what Dr. Warren said, Cora." Robert. How had Robert come in? When? Her body rolled slightly toward where he sat on the mattress. "Come, please, dearest. Let Perkins help you change. The porter's brought your dinner."

Cora heard him, smelled him, felt his thick hand on her shoulder, but she did not move.

"_You can run. Leave the money. Come home with us." _Peppermint. Her father smelled perpetually of peppermint. "_He doesn't love you, Cora. I'm giving you to a man who does not love you."_

And when Cora looked up again, the room was dark, and Robert was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

After four more days at sea, after four more days of the cold fogginess and icy shock, Cora had slowly begun to thaw. She ate, though she could not taste, she read, though she could not think, she walked the decks, though she could not stand for long. Robert had taken note, it seemed, and he kept by her side almost relentlessly. So relentlessly, in fact, that Cora did not have a moment alone. Robert seemed to follow her everywhere. He seemed to always be peering down into her face when she chanced to glance upward at him. He seemed to find small ways to touch her - her shoulder, her elbow, the small of her back – as if to ground her, as if to bring her back to present. But she was in present. She was in an inescapable present that Robert, herself, nor anyone else, could save her from. It was an inescapable present that Robert somehow exacerbated, if only by his attentiveness. She found herself retreating to her bath chamber and sitting on the floor there to escape him. He even requested to sleep by her side at night, and repeated his request every night, though she could not allow it. Not even once. She could not acquiesce.

Why? Why should he sleep next to her? She wouldn't make love to him. She wouldn't. It was a lie, and to think of it make the place where it had been, the place that had once cradled so much hope and joy, feel both heavy and yet achingly empty. Cora rested her hands across her corseted stomach and closed her eyes. She couldn't help but to immediately picture Robert and it angered her. Why should she picture him? Why should she think of him before anything else, especially when he had lied to her?

She spread her fingers over her belly and frowned. No. No, that wasn't quite right. Come to think of it, it wasn't a lie, and that's what really hurt. He'd never said it. He had never said that he loved her, she'd just wanted so much to believe that he did. But now it was clear to her. He did not. He had forbidden the last chance she'd ever have to see her father, and that wasn't love. Robert could not love her.

When at last they docked, Cora was both grateful and afraid. She wanted so much to be with her mother, to see her and to speak to her…to hear her loud, unabashed voice. But landing also made it real. She knew that when she arrived home, the house would be dark, and he wouldn't be there at the door. She knew that the home that she was returning to was not the home she'd left. It was not the home that was bright and busy with life. Not now. And furthermore she knew that her father's family would be there, the family she hadn't seen in over a year – most of whom had not come to the wedding. How could they have? It was an ocean away. No. They'd never met her husband, only heard of him through letters and what her father had told them. The Lord to whom she'd given her father's money.

_Lord Fortune-Hunter._

She peered up at Robert who was looking out over the pandemonium of the docks. She could tell at the terse concentration gathered between his brows that the sight before him was unnerving. Crowds and unorganized chaos always seemed to unnerve him. He liked order. He liked routine. She brought her gaze to what he saw.

The port was bustling; there were throngs of people, crates, luggage, surrounded by shouts, whistles, foreign tongues, all being dusted with fresh falling flurries. As they finally descended the platform, Cora could feel the freezing spray that the wind picked up from the sea below and threw around them. A snowflake fell on her cheek and she brushed it away.

The closer they got to the ground level, the closer Robert inched in toward her, until at last his arm was around her shoulders and holding her to him. Cora allowed it. She allowed the firm hold he kept of her upper arm. She allowed to be drawn in slowly to him, his chin lifted and searching. A fleeting sensation of safety fluttered in her chest.

"I don't see Harold. Surely Harold is to meet us."

Cora closed her eyes and exhaled. His grip on her grew tighter.

"Or your uncle, Frank. Do you see Frank, Cora?"

She covered her eyes lightly with her fingers. "They won't come, Robert. They're sitting shiva."

And suddenly it was colder and his grip on her was beginning to hurt, though she wasn't sure he had tightened it. "Harold is sitting sh-sha, oh for God's sake…whatever it is?"

"Shiva, Robert. Sitting shiva," Cora stiffened her shoulders.

"But he isn't Jewish. You aren't Jewish."

She had to square her jaw to keep from shouting. "Father is Jewish...was..." She took in a breath, closing her eyes again. "He's only respecting Father's wishes. Can't you understand that?"

Robert went on to try to say something more, but Cora didn't want to hear. She didn't want to hear, she didn't want to know, and she didn't want his arm around her. She shrugged out of his hold and took a step away from him, searching the port for a familiar face. In the distance, she spotted him.

"Harrison," Cora muttered and began to walk to the driver and the carriage that were strangely more familiar than even the man who trailed at her heels.

* * *

It was snowing harder when they finally arrived.

Cora stepped out into the street and looked up into the sky, letting the white flurries settle among her pitch dress and dark hair. She let them fall frozen onto her skin, and as they did, they melted. It was funny, she thought as she peered up into the gray sky, funny because she felt so cold. Her whole body, inside and out, felt so cold, and yet the snow was melting.

"Cora? My dearest. You mustn't get ill."

She heard Robert's voice two paces before her, and she slowly brought her eyes down, but not to his. Her door. Her parents' front door.

She tugged up her skirts and trudged up the steps, the snow crunching beneath her heels, Robert's hand quickly pressing to her back. The street was loud and hurried behind her, but it all faded away. The snow was falling faster, but she could clearly see the knob. She reached out and gripped it – somehow it was cold, even through her glove.

Inside the foyer, it was quiet. No, not quiet – silent. So silent, in fact, that Cora imagined she could make out the thick quiet sound of the snow falling just outside the door. She could hear that, and Robert breathing beside her.

She walked further into her house, the home that held so many memories of her life, pulling her gloves finger-by-finger from her hands. She looked up and around at all the paintings, the dozens that her father had bought for her at auctions and galleries. She looked to the framed photographs of she and Harold that rested in the usual places, next to various flower arrangements that must have been sent by friends and associates. She placed her gloves onto the speckled-cream marble buffet, the one near the stairs, and looked up to catch her reflection in the tremendous gilded mirror that hung before it like she'd done a thousand times before. But she did not see herself. A black lace cloth hung over it, blocking any light.

Yes, the house was painfully familiar, but not the same. It would never be the same again.

"Cora? Cora, you've made it."

She turned back toward the voice, and looked up to see Harold, her little brother. She'd not seen him since her wedding, as he tipped back drinks one after the other. But she could not move. She could not move from where she stood, her right hand still resting on the buffet. She could only nod.

"Where's Mother?"

Harold came a few steps toward her and Cora watched when he looked up to Robert and stretched out his hand.

"Thank you, Robert. Really. Thank you for bringing her."

And as if Robert had called her name, Cora brought her eyes to his and they locked there for a moment. But despite her immediate impulse to smile she did not. Even if she wanted to.


	3. Chapter 3

"She's here?"

Cora walked forward at the sound: the hard 'R', the low insistence, the undertones that suggested a more common background. It was her mother. Mother. She could hear her mother's soft shuffling dress from the distance.

"Yes, Mother. Yes, I'm here." Cora felt her legs begin to move, then rush, then run. She pushed past Robert. "Mother? Mother, I'm here."

There was nothing around her, it all faded away. Eleven months of separation, eleven months of letters in which Cora confided tentatively at first, but then whole-heartedly at last. There was nothing left but the child-like urge to fall into her mother's arms, to hold her, to grasp at her sleeves and to bury her head in her dress. In a desperate collision, Cora found her, and she embraced her. Hard. She thought she'd collapse there, in the arms that she'd cried in only several times before, but the arms that held and warmed her nonetheless. Martha's hold could make her believe that everything would be alright. Martha always seemed to know that everything would end for the better – she was the rock of their family. She was their anchor. But not this time. No. Not this time. For Martha was crying, and at the sound, Cora began to tremble.

"Mother?" she whispered into Martha's red curls. They were rough on Cora's cheek, unwashed and untidy, and the citrus scent that always lingered in her mother's hair was absent. "Shh. It's alright. I'm here now. I'm here."

"He asked and asked for you, Cora. He wanted to tell you. To speak to you -"

Cora squeezed her eyes. "I know. I tried to come."

"- He wanted so much for you to know. He wanted to see you."

"Robert wouldn't let me." Cora gripped her mother's black sleeve. Her throat was still raw, the words coming out in jagged, struggling syllables. "I begged, Mother. Robert wouldn't let me come. He wouldn't."

Martha's small, but sure hands slowly pushed Cora away and held her there, at a distance. Cora could feel their steadiness, though she continued to tremble beneath them. What? What had she said? Why would her mother stare at her that way? Cora studied the pale face of her mother. She looked at the way her mother furrowed her brows, the way her teary blue eyes narrowed in what seemed like slight confusion, then concern, and the way she moved them beyond Cora and nodded.

For some reason, a reason Cora was not quite sure of herself, she felt angry. It flared inside her chest, but in its wake, something else stirred. It was sorrow. And then, loneliness.

Martha, bringing her gaze back to Cora, brushed a soft hand over Cora's cheek, drying tears that had dampened her skin. She pressed it lightly, a gesture of affection. "Come upstairs."

* * *

Cora laid beside her mother in her parents' bed, the piles of covers and blankets pulled all around her, her mother's fingers on her hair.

"...and are you still bleeding?"

She shook her head numbly, images of three weeks ago, nearly four now, burning away in her mind after recounting it all again. She'd not said it aloud. She'd not told anyone aloud, not the doctor, not Violet. No one. Of course, why would she have? They had witnessed it. And now, she had witnessed it again, for the thousandth time. She just wanted to stop thinking about it. She just wanted to stop thinking about all of it.

"Robert did telegram, Cora."

Cora's chest felt too heavy to respond. She closed her eyes.

"Cora..."

"Was Father in pain?"

Martha was quiet, the stroking of Cora's hair stopped.

Cora maneuvered herself beside her mother; she propped herself so she could see her better. She began to shake her head before the words could come. "I would've been here weeks ago. Weeks!"

Martha pressed her lips, nodding silently.

"I begged Mother." Cora felt the tears come again. "I begged him. Daily. He knew..." The tears were coming faster now, her words were starting to slur and yet Cora couldn't stop. She didn't want to stop. Not this. She had told no one. She'd told no one, and her mother was quiet and listening, her eyes red from crying, but clear in attentiveness. "I wanted so much to see Father. To tell him. To apologize. To read to him from..." Cora sighed, then pulled in a wet breath. "...whatever book he was reading now..."

"_Robinson Crusoe,"_ Martha's voice was quiet, very quiet. "He didn't like it."

"But Robert..." And as if of its own accord, her head fell again to her mother's lap, her sobs shaking her shoulders. "...And I lost the baby anyhow. I lost my baby and now..." She pulled in more hard breaths, trying to calm herself, but trying in vain. "I don't think I would have, you know? If he had just let me come."

Martha's voice sounded strange, distant and strained, at her response. "Don't. Stop, Cora."

But Cora's thoughts were black and cold. Her heart hurt, a physical, throbbing pain. "I can't..." she managed, and felt her mother's other hand on her back, rubbing it. She heard her mother begin to cry as well, and oddly it soothed her. Robert had not cried with her. Robert never cried with her. He never showed any emotion. Why did he never show any emotion?

"And yet I love him, Mother. Why? Why do I love him?"

The words were said before she could stop them, and she felt selfish at the sound of them. Her father was dead. Her father had been buried only five days ago. Her Levinson family were gathered downstairs, having not seen her in months and months, and yet she could not stop the words that came from her mouth.

"I'm sorry, Mother. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't talk about myself."

And just as Martha did before, she rubbed her back and cried along with her.

* * *

She made her way down the steps, in her stockinged feet, and through the foyer, going into dark blue of the sitting room. Upon entering, she cast her eyes around the space and took them all in. All were crouched low, some on stools, some on the floor, but the scene was the same as it had been those years ago in Cincinnati. A group all in their wrinkled black clothes, a torn piece of the fabric above their hearts. All shoeless, they tucked their feet beneath them: beloved Aunt Ruth, her husband Frank; distant Uncle Tobias and Aunt Annele, their dark-haired daughter, Hanna. Harold, who sat on the floor beside Savta. And Robert.

"Pretty Cora. Our pretty Cora!" Aunt Ruth stood and stretched out her arms, coming to Cora. Cora watched her come, her black dress stained at the lap where she must have spilled something on it days ago – Cora knew she had not changed, her words from Saba's sitting room a decade ago echoing around her head. _It's proper mourning, Cora. For us. For the Jewish._

She let Aunt Ruth take her in and hold her for a moment, Cora tentatively returning the gesture. She sensed the others clamoring to stand from where they were on the floor, Uncle Tobias groaning and muttering something in Hebrew that Cora did not understand. But what she could understand were Aunt Ruth's words that she spoke against her hair.

"'God knows how we are fashioned, God remembers that we are dust./ The days of mortals are like grass; We flourish as the flowers of the field.'"

Aunt Ruth's words strangled and stirred inside Cora's throat. "Aunt Ruth," she whispered, then cleared the irritation. She felt her aunt release her and she greeted her father's family. She embraced the tall, broad form of her father's older brother, Tobias. She crouched down to where her grandmother sat, on the floor, and kissed her soft, thin cheek. Savta's fingers trembled as she brought them to Cora's face, patting her cheek, her elderly grandmother's head shaking slightly when she leant in to kiss hers in turn. She'd not touched so many people since she left America. The only person who ever touched her was Robert.

"Isi's girl," Savta said softly, her voice as tremulous as her aged fingers. "Cora. How proud he was of you. How proud we are."

Cora knelt before her, her words bringing her to her knees. "Oh, Savta..." she shook her head. If only she knew. Father wasn't proud. He wasn't.

"And Iyshah – your husband. Kind, Cora. God has blessed you." Her shaky hand stretched beyond Cora and Cora peered over her shoulder at who she beckoned. She pressed her lips as Robert came near and as he hesitantly took her grandmother's hand, he too crouching before her. Cora could smell the cinnamon of his scent, and it suddenly felt suffocating. "May God bless you in numbers and numbers, as He has done me. Numbers and numbers, child."

Cora didn't even remember breaking away from her, she didn't even sense what she was doing until she was across the room and in the foyer again, away from them all. She wiped her tears from her cheeks furiously, and she looked at the scene she had left.

Robert was standing again, nodding in whispers to her aunt, Ruth, and her uncle, Frank. She watched as he furrowed his brows and looked to where she had escaped and she frowned as he turned. How did it not hurt him? How did Savta's words not sting him as they had done her?

Cora watched and watched, even as Harold came closer, letting her eyes roam over her husband standing those twenty feet away. She saw as he pulled the bottom of his waistcoat. She saw as he lifted her chin. She heard him quietly clear his throat. All these things she knew were his nervous habits. She'd learned the signs of his discomfort. Her gaze ended at his feet, in his socks, his shoes having been discarded and put elsewhere. He looked around him, perhaps for her, and she knew he was as perplexed and slightly as alarmed as she had been when she was twelve, sitting for her grandfather.

Harold whispered her name when he came near, holding out a letter to her. "Here."

Cora glanced down to it, and then to her brother, taking it in her hands.

"Mother isn't doing well, Cora. She stays in her room. She doesn't eat."

Robert was closer now, craning his neck slightly to peer down into Cora's face.

Cora fought the urge to square her jaw, and instead ignored him, looking down into the letter and easing herself to the floor. The warmth of Robert's hand was suddenly on her arm, "No, my darling, sit in a chair. Sit here. Be comfortable."

She could only shake her head. Did she really need to explain it again? "No chairs, Robert. We've been made low by grief."

She sensed as he leaned toward her, though she did not look. She could see out of her periphery that he glanced back into and around the room, at the small clusters of her father's family that spread out around the furnished room. A darker part of her wanted to laugh – what she was sure was thousands of dollars worth of chairs and settees, rendered perfectly needless.

"But," he whispered in her ear, "you aren't Jewish. You have a reason to be easy on yourself-"

For the second time that day, Cora felt anger between her lungs. "This isn't for me, Robert. This is for Father. Please!" She could hear Harold say her name lowly, as if reproachingly. But she shook her head dismissively and looked at the words written across the paper. Her mouth parted at the words she read. "She's coming here?"

"Tomorrow."

"Who's this?" Robert stepped closer to her, his arm brushing her shoulder as he read the words she held.

"Oh, God," Cora sighed, reading the words again. "Does she know we're respecting Jewish mourning, then? I can't imagine she knows quite what to do. We don't quite know, and it was _our_ father."

"You know her, she never feels uneasy anywhere she goes. Where do you think Mother gets it from?"

Cora pouted her lip slightly with a small lift of her brow. That was true.

"Who? Who is coming?"

Cora let Harold take the letter from her. "GranMary," he answered as he creased it again. "She's due to arrive in the morning."

"I apologize. Mary? GranMary?"

Cora looked over at her husband, her husband of a year, and furrowed her brows. "Mary, Robert." His expression did not change. "My mother's mother. The one I'm named for. Cora Marion."

She watched as his features fell into recognition and then quick regret. "Oh, oh, yes. Of course. Mary."

Cora only rolled her eyes and pushed past him again, muttering under her breath as she went. "You'd know if you ever listened to anything – anything – I said. Anything. Ever."


	4. Chapter 4

The sheets were warm when she woke, the heavy blankets atop of her cocooning her into a phantom spring. Cora nestled further into them, her body heavy and sore. Not truly a physical sore, not her muscles or joints, but more one that came from within her. A strange soreness, it felt strongest in her chest and radiated out toward her back. She wondered if perhaps it was from crying, but she doubted it. She hadn't cried herself to sleep last night as she had done for the past several before. She thought then about stretching her shoulders and then her neck, but didn't. Blinking her eyes open to the pale pink that coated her childhood room, she decided against it. Everything felt so warm. She felt so much warmer than she had in what seemed a year. Brighter today, sunlight poured into her room through the white lace curtains at the long windows. Keeping perfectly still, she stared off into the light, taking in easy breaths. The morning sun kissed everything around her.

As she gained more and more consciousness, she became aware of his presence at the end of her bed, sitting there. She let silence remain between them for a few moments more before she slowly brought her eyes to him, having to dip her chin down along her pillow. In the quiet, she could hear her eyelashes brush against the fabric. A feather poked at her cheek.

Robert adjusted himself slightly. "Would you care for breakfast?"

Taking in his words slowly, still not fully aware, Cora finally understood them. She shook her head no.

"I'd feel much better if you ate something. You went to bed without eating anything."

Again, Cora listened to his words and let them sink down into silence again before responding. She wasn't hungry. She didn't know if she'd ever feel hungry again.

"Where is Perkins?" she asked, suddenly feeling the gentle absence of her maid.

Before answering, she watched her husband let out a heavy breath. He pressed his hands. "Ruth's sent both she and Watson to stay at some hotel. Something about proper mourning, we won't be needing to be changed."

Cora nodded slightly in acknowledgement.

"I'll bring you up something, though, should you like it." Robert inched closer to her on her bed, the covers stirring under his movements. "Some toast."

She let her gaze move away from him as he spoke, settling again on the light that filtered brightly into her room. She couldn't eat. She could not eat. "No," she answered. "But thank you."

They sat again in silence, but Cora marked it less cold that it had been for some time. A long time. Six weeks' time. Eventually, she shifted her head again against the pillow and found the edge of the dark pink blankets covering her. She rubbed the hem of one of them between her fingertips.

"Where did you sleep?"

Robert was quiet, but then answered her moments later, in a small voice. "On the sofa, in your father's office."

The green one. She stilled her fingers and brought her eyes again to him. She wanted to ask if he had been comfortable, if he had been cold. A small part of her wanted him to crawl inside the warmth she held around her and lie with her in the bed she'd slept in as a girl. But she did not. Instead she only said a tiny, "Oh." She meant it as apologetic as it sounded, and was momentarily glad of it.

The softness of her voice must have prompted him, though, for he moved closer to her, and he brought his thick hand to hers, though hers were entwined now with the sheets and bedding. She stared at the way his fingers grasped at her hands.

"Are you alright?"

Cora froze. Just like that, with his simple question, his three words, she was cold again.

What? Why? Why would he ask that? Shouldn't he know? No. No, she wasn't alright. Why did he ask such stupid questions? Alright? Was she alright? It took everything in her not to rip her fingers from his. Instead she closed her eyes and swallowed.

"Do you think I'm alright?"

She sensed him tense slightly, could tell he was growing angry. "Cora. You know what I meant."

She shook her head.

"I don't know why you're pushing me away, Cora. I don't know quite what I've done. You couldn't have come, Cora. Not six weeks ago. Please. Let's move past that. We're here now." Robert moved his hands, removed them from hers, but Cora could not open her eyes. She could not look at him. She squeezed her eyes more tightly. "It was out of my control, Cora. Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I wanted any of this? Because I did not." It hurt. Everything in her hurt. "So I suggest, if you're able, you rise and come downstairs, otherwise you should let me know."

She pulled in a long breath and held it.

"Fine." She could feel the bed move as Robert rose from it. "Your grandmother's here."

Cora opened her eyes as he closed the door after him. Part of her was surprised that it wasn't slammed.

* * *

The house was never quiet growing up. Her mother was always loud, for one. For two, Harold had been forced to learn the piano, though he swore it a feminine talent and complained woefully as he played. For three, Father could always be heard laughing and swearing with his associates. Crass, but delightfully so, they all seemed to swarm about him, forever in their home, trudging back to his office.

Peering down into the foyer from the balcony, she saw the flowers again that were most assuredly from them, his business people. The Jewish did not send flowers. _They die,_ her father had always said.

They die.

Tickings of clocks that had not been stopped, and the muffled noises of the outside world, ignorant to their loss, were the only noises she heard now, and it was loud. She found it strange. The quiet made her house louder than it had even been before.

As she took the stairs, she strained her ears to hear any noises she could, any that would dull the roar of quiet. Slowly, a low voice rose up to meet her. GranMary.

_"...I'll be sure to have soup brought up to her this afternoon. You'll do that, won't you Landry?"_

After a few steps more, Cora peered over the banister and through the threshold of the foyer where, despite shiva, despite her Levinson relatives all on stools or crouching low to the floor around the sitting room, her grandmother sat poised in a needlepoint chair. She watched the way the tall woman's long-fingered hands rested open-palmed in her lap. She saw the small curve of her nose, the still-dark, though graying, curls that were tucked under her black hat. The golden cross she wore glinted around her neck.

Cora studied her other relatives' reactions; they didn't seem to notice. Or if they had noticed, they didn't seem to mind, as they all set clustered among themselves, away from her. But Robert. Robert sat on the ground beside her. He sat on the ground beside her and Aunt Ruth.

_"And as for Cora,"_ Cora perked at her name; standing straighter on the grand stairwell, she listened closely. _"She'll come through it. She was close to her father, God knows. But she'll come through it."_

Cora kept her eyes trained on her grandmother as she began again to slowly descend the stairs to see her better. Her hand ran along the smooth mahogany banister. The creamy marble of the steps and floor below gleamed around her.

"Then you haven't heard." It was Aunt Ruth. Cora remained quiet, and she stopped. She saw them clearly now; she saw the expressions they wore, the eagerness in which Aunt Ruth prompted Robert to share their failed news. "Tell her, Robert."

_No._ Cora narrowed her eyes and found Robert's face. No. He wouldn't. He wouldn't talk of it like this. _Please._ She was so tired of talking of it.

She watched his eyes go wide for only a moment, and then as he shook his head decidedly. He glanced up at her mother's maid standing nearby, and then again to her aunt and grandmother. The women were watching him expectantly.

"No."

Stunned, Cora stayed silent and still on the stairs, not moving, not caring to move. Stunned that he had chosen not to discuss it, everything around her suddenly came became clear, as if she'd been moving around in a strange fog. Stunned that he had acted that way, a way that reflected her own feelings, she suddenly became aware; there was clarity. The marble step was suddenly cold beneath her feet, even through her stockings. The smoothness of the banister was cool beneath her palms and she held onto it tightly. She held onto the banister as she had done the railing of the ship. She closed her eyes.

Quickly, and unexpectedly, Cora wanted to stand near him. She wanted to hold his hand. She opened her eyes.

Working her down the remainder of the stairs, Cora padded quietly into the sitting room, where Robert, in all his propriety, stood from the floor when she came in. It made her want to smile. Shoeless, his unchanged clothes dirtied from the floor, he still stood as a lady entered the room.

She studied his perplexed expression as she came in. She stared at him momentarily before realizing the cause of it, the cause of this bewildered gaze. She had wanted to smile, but she hadn't noticed that she had. She had smiled. And was. She was smiling up at him. Sadly, yes, but it wasn't a scowl, and it wasn't a frown. A smile.

And Robert smiled back at her.

"GranMary. How wonderful of you to come." Cora, shaking her gaze, met her grandmother and leaned down to peck a quick kiss in the air near her cheek. When she pulled away, she stepped backward, closer to Robert. "Have you seen Mother?"

Mary nodded, "She's having breakfast. Which is something you should do yourself, yes?"

Cora fidgeted by her husband's side, taken aback by the immediacy of her grandmother's words. "I..I'm not terribly hungry."

"But you will eat," Mary tucked her chin and peered up at her with her impossibly communicative, sharp, brown eyes. "Robert, bring her into the dining room. Landry will give her some eggs."

"GranMary -"

"Harold sent for me to take care of you. And of your mother." Cora glanced over at Robert and then down again at her grandmother. A sudden memory GranMary resurfaced, one that Cora had forgotten. When in which Cora was only nine, and dreading the insistence that she learn to ride, though she had been terrifically terrible at it. GranMary, as usual, achieved her objectives, and was soon applauding Cora encouragement near the make-shift horse yard at Newport.

"Now off you go. And enjoy your eggs." And just like twelve years ago, Cora was to acquiesce to GranMary's wishes. "Robert..."

Robert's hand was on the small of her back, and she allowed herself to be lead into the dining room.

* * *

Cora leaned against the wall as she sat on the floor, Landry having brought her a tray for her plate of steaming eggs. She could see Robert staring at the steaming plate and cup of coffee from where he sat near her, his ankles crossed, his toes flexing up and down intermittently.

"I'm...I'm truly not hungry." Cora replaced the fork she held to the tray before her, sliding it away. "I can't eat. I...I don't feel hunger. I...I keep thinking of him."

At this admission, she was grateful for Robert's silence.

And then, for the first time since he died, for the first time in a week she spoke of him. The memory quick and unbidden, she told Robert. However, she only heard the words she said; her mind – her thoughts – felt completely separate, as if they weren't there at all. The scene tumbled from her lips slowly, yet easily.

"He came into my room that Tuesday...that Tuesday before I left. I remember it was in the morning, and...being in Newport we had the balcony's doors open to the breeze." She swallowed, her mind feeling the salty gusts. "He came in and he...he held something, there. In his hands. He always did that," she felt her head tip to the side, her words stretching with approval. "He always snuck in little gifts, that...at the time...didn't seem meaningful...and yet..." she licked her lips, and she took in a breath to continue. "Anyway...he came in and...and Landry was packing. I was holding up one of my new dresses, the blue one. The one with the small pearl buttons up the sleeves. And I was looking at the buttons." She paused, yet again, her chest suddenly feeling much heavier. "And I realize now, that I didn't look up at him." Her voice had grown higher, and she felt her eyebrows knitting. "He was talking to me, and yet, I...I didn't look at him..." she trailed off, seeing the scene. She heard him. She could sense him in the periphery of her vision. She could smell the peppermint of his coat. "He...he left, leaving the gift on the table near the door. I didn't open it until we boarded the boat."

_Her hands tore nimbly at the brown paper packaging. She read the title again, and again, her fingers tracing over the golden ivy that grew across the cover._

"And what was it?"

Cora took in a breath, a breath that she hadn't realized she needed, when Robert spoke. She brought her eyes to him. "Hmm?"

_"_The gift. What was it?"

_The inscription inside the cover simply read 'from your Father'._

"_The Portrait of a Lady,_" Cora answered, "by Henry James."

She watched as Robert nodded, and as he adjusted very slightly against the wall. "Ah. Yes. I remember you reading it at Downton. The week that I proposed."

She only stared in response. She stared, and she stared, long and hard. "Yes," she finally said.

Also adjusting her now-sore back, she looked away from Robert again, then off into some middle distance where her memories were more clear, where she could sense her father, where she could smell peppermint.

"We weren't as close after that. After I accepted you…." her voice spoke. She heard it, though she had not permitted it to say it.

_She showed her father the ring. He sipped his drink in his office as Martha told him about the plans, the wedding a mere six months away, and he frowned._

"No...we weren't as close after that."

There was a long, long silence between them. Cora's thoughts jumped and crawled through dark places and strange feelings until at last they ended on Robert. Robert. The man who had slept on the small green sofa in her father's office. The image of him curled onto it near the fireplace, a small sheet as a cover, appeared in her mind. She pouted slightly.

"I'll sleep with Mother tonight." Cora curled her long fingers around the warmth of her coffee cup's handle. "You may have my bed."

Cora lifted the cup from the saucer, and she took a sip. The heat of the coffee soothed her aching throat.


	5. Chapter 5

Cora could count on one hand the number of times she'd slept beside her mother, the times so infrequent and so few that they stuck out in her mind, those memories a slightly different tint from the other shades of colors there. The last time of which had been in England, the night before she was to marry Robert. Robert. The night before she had become Robert's.

How did it feel like so long ago now? How did it feel like another lifetime?

Lying in the darkness beside Martha, Cora pulled the covers more tightly around herself. She brought them to her chin, and she rested them there. Her mother had only just fallen asleep, and Cora did not want to disturb her. She'd been so tired. Her mother had been so tired, and yet had such a difficult time finding rest, finding comfort. She had slept near Father for so long. It would be hard to fall asleep without him.

Cora frowned behind the beige sheet she now held at her lips. It was strange sleeping here, lying here where her father should have been. It was strange to sleep in her father's place. Flames from her parents' fireplace threw shadows that danced around the room, and Cora listened to the gentle crackle and insistent pops that filled the space. She let her eyes roam around the bedroom walls, watching the shadows, taking in the art and the portraits that filled years and years of her life, sitting on the floor watching her mother's maid finish her hair, curled into a chair with a blanket, Harold nearby, as their father read aloud from one of his books.

"_Call me Ishmael..."_

Breathing evenly, as if to push out the sound of his voice, she peered over the covers once again. Her sight took in the paintings of she and Harold that hung proudly above the mantel. How remarkable they were – both of them. How lifelike. How accurate. Cora blinked as she stared at them both, as she stared at the one of herself. It was well-done, she had admit, how the artist had captured the subtle and playful lopsidedness of her smile, the strong line of her jaw, the near-black darkness of her hair. She remembered having them done, her parents having them commissioned when she was just a bit younger - sixteen. But she hadn't paid them much mind after that. She hadn't cared to. But now, the longer she stared at them, the longer she looked at the artist's impression of her features – her nose, her lips, her eyes – and the more and more guilty she felt.

Had her father gone to bed with the thought of her, with the thought of his child an ocean away, on his mind? Did parents think of their children that way? Did her parents see the likeness of she and her brother and think of them every night, just before they turned down their lamps? Just before they blew out their candles? Did parents do that? For children certainly did not.

At least, Cora did not. Not for a long time now. She'd not thought of him in such a long time, and the realization of this hardened her guilt, and it felt heavy in her chest. It wasn't solely her father, she tried to assure herself, it was them both. She had thought less and less of her father and her mother. It wasn't that she loved them less, but perhaps...perhaps she missed them less. She was less lonely now, at Downton.

Robert began to share her bed every night four months ago. Before then she'd taken the time to write every night, just before she retired, before Robert would slip inside...be with her...and then slip out again. But since that had changed, since Robert did not simply slip in and then out again, since she now more often fell asleep with her hand touching his, she had stopped writing every night. She'd stopped writing every week. She wrote once a month, on the first, and to her mother, sending Father and Harold love at the closing. She'd not written a letter to her father. Not once. Not a single line directly to him, but suddenly the guilt felt less like guilt and more like anger. More like resentment.

For her father had never written her, either.

Her mind rested on that thought longer than she liked. Her mind rested on the hollowness of that, on the emptiness of it. For now she knew, Cora knew, that he never would.

Her father was gone. He was gone, and the last thing they'd ever truly said to one another was not kind. He had not been kind, and she had been deserving of it.

But to never write? Why? Why had he never written her? Why hadn't he when Mother had written those six weeks ago, informing her of his illness? Why, after she'd been married for three months, for six, for nine, hadn't he yet come to accept it and move past it? Why? Why couldn't he move past it? Had he not missed her?

Cora's breathing hitched in her chest.

He had to have missed her. If he loved her at all, like every parent should love his child, then he missed her. For heaven's sake! Cora missed the child she had only carried for thirteen weeks. A child she'd not seen, not held, not yet been able to protect, and the child was missed. How, then? How did he not feel the need to write to her?

Surprisingly, and seemingly without reason, the image of Robert came to mind. Of Robert among her family, his shoes kicked to the doorway. Of Robert sitting on the floor beneath GranMary, declining to recall again he and Cora's own private loss. Declining to cheapen what had been, refusing to exploit the few months of intimate preparations – the lists of names and happy disagreements on the best colors for the nursery – for what Cora believed to be nothing more than morbid curiosity.

She thought of Robert now, how, only a couple of doors away, he was lying peacefully in her bed, surrounded by all the things that had given her comfort as a girl. She thought of the way he slept so near her back at Downton, how he always, just before sleep claimed him, whispered _Good night, my darling,_ Cora never managing to mutter her response. Her response of how she loved him. She couldn't. Though it had been said before, she couldn't say it now. She was waiting for him to say it now.

...and just like that, Cora's jaw went slack. She knew.

Cora knew.

Her father had been waiting for her. He had been waiting for her to write, for her to come the distance that he always came...but she did not.

Cora had never written to her father. She had never written him.

The frosty heaviness of this fact fell cold onto her chest, and in the bed lying next to her mother, Cora cried herself into a restless sleep.

* * *

She wasn't sure what had woken her, but woke her it had. Cora ran her hand over her face, it feeling strangely stiff from sleep, and looked to where her mother sat up beside her. She grinned up at Martha briefly, but devoid of any glee.

"Glad one of us can get some sleep."

Cora furrowed her brows and moved to lie flat on her back. Her mother's sleeping form from hours ago, bathed in flickering firelight, appeared in Cora's mind.

Martha spoke again. "If you snored a little louder it might help."

Cora let go of the breath she held. "Oh, Mother." She pulled herself up to sit beside her, and then studied her mother's features. Her blue eyes sagged with exhaustion, the corners of her mouth drooped sadly. Cora reached her hand slowly over, covering her mother's.

"Won't you try to eat something? Maybe some toast?" Robert's words from the morning before echoed from Cora's lips. She pressed her mouth at the realization, pausing momentarily at the stir behind her ribs. "Or...or perhaps just some coffee. Would you like for me to bring you up some coffee?"

Cora watched quietly as her mother's eyes roved over to her own, the blues of them so identical. Martha gave a small shrug, her mouth moving into what was almost a smile, but not quite even moving into what could be considered a grin. Cora took it as acceptance.

"Good," Cora forced a smile. She squeezed her mother's hand. "I'm glad. Really."

Martha rolled her eyes away from Cora and sunk again down into her bed, sighing.

Taking that as her cue to leave, Cora slid from the bed, letting her black skirts fall around her legs. She moved to the door, turning back once before leaving the room to look at her mother. Martha, who stared out toward the window, almost seemed a different person, but in one small morning, in one small complaint and in one small roll of her eyes, Cora could see that perhaps she'd not sink completely. Perhaps Martha would, in fact, swim. Father would want them all to swim.

She let this thought carry her down the dark hall. She let this thought provoke other thoughts, ones with similar lightness, and she studied them. She paused on the one of Robert. Of Robert remaining shoeless and in his same set of clothing, in respect for Father. Of Robert sleeping on her father's small couch, knowing she'd not wanted him to sleep near her, though she was sure he wished to. Of Robert offering to bring her up some toast, something she'd never seen him do in the year she'd lived with him. Servants brought up toasts, not heirs to an Earldom.

And just as Cora began to grow warmer, just as the hallway suddenly didn't seem so dark, she detected it. She heard the small murmur of voices, of women's voices and then, unmistakably, Robert's.

She slowed to a stop, and she looked attentively at the small natural light that came from her mother's upstairs sitting room, the door only slightly ajar. It flooded onto the dark green walls of the hall around her.

"_...it just didn't seem right. It didn't seem right to risk."_

Her features all fell into a solemn alertness. Robert. What...what was he saying?

"_But how much of a risk did it pose, Robert, really? How far along was she when you first learned?" _

Cora's eyes widened slightly. No. No, no, no. They weren't, Aunt Ruth and Robert….he wasn't...why? Why did they feel the need to discuss it?

"_In her third month..."_

"_Then why?" _And GranMary, too. GranMary.

"_Because the doctor was sure she'd lose it...the baby..."_

Cora's hand went to the wall, holding her, steadying her, her eyes drifted away from the light, away from the sound of their voices, but still hearing them nonetheless. Robert's voice, though quieter, persisted through the dark. It stung her ears.

"_...she'd had complications...there'd been difficulties. I...I'm not sure…I could never...never bear to hear, but...he was certain that...that she would miscarry. He was surprised she'd gone for nearly four months."_

No. Cora shook her head, her lungs heavy as stone. No. No.

"_We thought it best to keep it from her. We thought perhaps it may help...but...then. Well." _A pause._ "She doesn't know. Still, she doesn't know." _

She could hear her grandmother's voice, but could not make out the words. She could hear Aunt Ruth whispering, but she didn't care what she said. She didn't want to know what she said. She felt heat. She felt anger. She felt deceit and it burned, how it burned, inside her chest. Tears blurring her vision, but refusing to fall, she moved to the sitting room's door, and she pushed it slowly open. Completely open. A flood of mid-morning light poured onto her, a brightness on the black she wore.

The three occupants of the room were startled, Robert even visibly jumping, standing at her appearance. He said her name, but she didn't care.

"You lied to me."

Again, he muttered something.

"You lied to me," he tried to talk again, but Cora could not hear him. "Robert, you lied to me."

Then, not being able to look at him any longer, not being able to stand before them, the three people she loved more than anyone left in this world, hiding things from her, sharing in their lies, she turned from the door and she rushed toward her room – an escape. She choked at the thought that no, no there would never be an escape. Not from this. Not from any of it.

"Cora!"

She heard him now, but she didn't care. She didn't want to care.

"Cora, darling, please."

She felt the brush of his fingertips at her elbow and she whirled around, holding her arm stiffly. She stared up into his face.

"Cora -"

"How could you? How could you lie to me? You lied to me!" She was yelling, but not yelling; a desperate sort of angry confusion coming out in strained hushed tones, some words more emphatic than others.

"Lied? Cora, I never lied to you."

"You didn't tell me the truth, Robert. You hid the truth," she dropped her arm. "I'm not sure what you may call that in England, but here, and to me, that is lying."

Frustration registered in her husband's features. "I hid the truth to protect you."

"Protect me? From what? From what?"

"From the stress, from the worry! I thought it'd be more harmful to worry. I...I thought it may...may change the course of things!"

Cora stood straighter and pulled in a cold breath. "Do you have any idea how selfish that sounds?"

Clearly shocked, Robert, too, stood more upright. "What?"

"Have you any clue as to how selfish that sounds, Robert?"

And then, as if the floodgates had opened, as if the dam of all of his repressed emotions had been nicked by her tiny remark, Cora watched as his body rose in anger. "How selfish? How selfish! Yes. Yes! How bloody selfish! For God's sake, Cora. For God's sake! What would you have me do? What? What else could I possibly do to show my love for you! Against Dr. Warren's orders, against all my better judgement, I bring you here so you can mourn for your father. I bring you, ill as you are, across the damned ocean in mid-winter all for some mourning exercises that don't at all make the slightest bit of sense to me! I don't bathe. I don't change my clothes. I sit on the bloody floor all for a man who, quite frankly, detested me! But I do it regardless. I do it regardless, because I love you. I do it for you. For you! And you call me selfish."

And before Cora could react properly, Robert flew down the hall, and slammed a door, the paintings her father had given her shaking on the wall behind her.


	6. Chapter 6

Slowly, very slowly, Cora padded quietly back into her mother's bedroom, closing the door softly behind her. The flickering firelight fluttered around her bare feet on the floor and, despite the room's warmth, her skin prickled from the coolness of the winter night.

She'd bathed. Though shiva did not end until tomorrow morning, though the rest of her father's family would not have their proper baths until tomorrow. Cora had bathed. She'd freed herself of her corset, she'd freed herself of her stockings, she'd torn away the heavy black layers of fabric and exchanged them for the light silk of her ivory chemise. Shiva or not, she had bathed, and her body felt infinitely lighter. But her heart did not.

She'd spent the entirety of the day in silence. Utter and complete silence. She'd not known what to do. What should she have done after that, after Robert's...well, what was it? An outburst? An admission? A release? Cora lingered on that word, release. It had been a release, hadn't it? A release. A release of everything that he was feeling that Cora had been too blind to see. She'd been too grieved to see. She'd been too caught up in her own mind, her own heart, to truly see his.

With a faint sinking, Cora realized that it'd not been the first time she'd done this. He'd not been the first person she'd failed to see. He'd not been the first person she'd neglected to truly understand due to her own uncertainty. She'd also done it with _him - _her father. And now, he was gone, and it was too late to make amends.

Standing in the center of the room, Cora felt as the house felt - dark and silent. She knew that Martha slept, what seemed, soundly in her large downy bed. She knew that all of her other relations slept, too, most in the clothes they still wore from the funeral, dirty and uncomfortable all to pay their respects. But in spite of slumber all around her, in spite of the thick quiet of night, Cora was suddenly awake. She was suddenly aware. She was suddenly conscious of the words she'd said to him...to Robert...and the words he'd, in turn, said to her.

He loved her. Robert had said that he loved her. In all of his anger, in all of the truth that he had poured before her...between them...he had said that he loved her.

And Cora believed him.

Taking in breaths, staring out onto some unseen shape in her mother's room, the fireplace crackling beside her, Cora thought of him. She felt for him. He had come all this way for her. He'd borne so much suffering, so much more suffering than she'd ever imagined.

How long, she wondered darkly, how long had he known? How long had he known that they'd lose their chance, their pregnancy, the baby they'd named and spoken to? How long had he feigned joy, just to keep her from worrying? How long had he hoped that his efforts to protect her...to protect their child...would not be in vain?

Cora heard her words from weeks and weeks ago at a distance, seeing them as if a third-party may see them, seeing them as if a more rational version of herself had stepped back into time and watched her carefully.

_You can't forbid me, Robert. As much as you may try, you can't forbid me from going home. _

_Robert, don't be silly. People travel while pregnant all the time, and nothing ever happens._

_What are you so afraid of, Robert? That I'll go home to see my father and not come back to you?_

Another Cora, a more understanding Cora, watched as Robert held her as she cried, as he held her hand as the doctor tried to explain again how to best heal: Adequate sleep. Fortifying meals. Limited physical activity for at least four weeks.

_There'll be other chances, my darling. There'll be other pregnancies. _

But Cora had only shaken her head. It had taken a year, nearly a year, for this one.

She was now a Cora that was less blinded by grief, a Cora that now saw with a clarity that almost frightened her, what Robert had done. What Robert had meant. What Robert, her husband, had felt. And what...so very painfully obvious...what he felt _for her._

Casting a languid gaze over her slumbering mother, Cora decided. Turning away, not bothering to dress in her dressing gown nor her slippers, Cora slipped from the warmth of her mother's room and out into the dark chill of the deep green hall. Taking the barefooted paces she'd taken a hundred times before, she moved toward the last door of the hallway. She moved toward the door she'd know apart from any other door, the door she'd pushed open again and again, though somehow tonight, it felt different behind her fingertips.

Quietly turning the knob, she pushed her way slowly into the pink of the bedroom, the fire in the hearth at the corner of the room tossing flickers of golden light around the paintings she had memorized every stroke of. She closed the door after her, and the latch clicked.

Robert sat up instantaneously in the bed. "Cora?" he called out, squinting.

Her head felt too heavy, and yet too light. Her chest heaved beneath her thin gown. Her jaw moved inside her mouth, her fingers tingled by her sides.

"Cora." Robert sat up further in the dark rose-colored blankets, adjusting himself to see her better. Cora could see he had changed, too, his soft blue pajama shirt pulling at the way his arm held his weight. "What are you doing? Where is your housecoat?"

She barely managed to open and close her mouth. Her thoughts were too hurried. How would she say it? How could she say it?

His brows dipped above his narrowed eyes. "Really, Cora. Is everything all right?"

"Do you?"

He fell silent at her voice.

She gathered, from somewhere deep within her, a will to speak again.

"You...you do, don't you, Robert? You...you love me."

It was quiet again, but only for a moment's time. Robert spoke, everything suddenly very still around them.

"Of course I do." Cora stared at him, his eyes holding onto hers. "I do."

Swallowing, Cora felt herself being drawn to him, as if some invisible force were pulling her, tugging her closer and closer to him. To where he was. Sitting upright in her bed.

She could feel his eyes on her as she drew nearer, encouraging her, but also wide in slight bewilderment; but his confusion did nothing to abate the strength at which she felt this compulsion.

Running her hands over his chest, she steadied herself as she pulled herself effortlessly astride of him, and without hesitation, as if it were all part of some fluid dance, some orchestrated ballet, she pressed her mouth to his, and she kissed him. Slowly, at first, and then at the sensation of the warmth of his lips, with a small insistence. Her hands went to his cheeks, the rough of them scratching her soft palms.

"We mustn't," he carefully warned against her, their noses a hairsbreadth apart, her dress pooling around her hips as she sat across his lap.

But she only shook her head slightly, kissing him again. She kissed him, feeling him, rocking her pelvis more closely toward him.

"You're certain?" he managed against her mouth and by way of answer, she silenced him, pushing herself flush against him.

His hands went to her hips, pulling them nearer, and Cora could feel the heat of his grasp through the bunches of her silk dress. She allowed herself to feel, to really feel, what was happening, to taste his mouth, to smell his scent, to enjoy the rise of her flesh at the coarseness of his touch. His fingers working up her sides, beneath her gown, sent warm shivers through her and stirred a delicious heat deep within her, the heat she had learned to mean only one thing. She wanted him. But more than that, she loved him.

God, how she loved him.

And suddenly, the only impulse she felt was the need to satisfy him. The need to somehow move even closer to him, with him, until there was no space left between them. She couldn't bear the space between them. There was more warmth, there was more urgency - a yearning – and she could barely control the way she moved her hips above him. She moaned softly at the reaction it stirred beneath her, her heart flipping and spinning at the very thought. He wanted her. Her wanted her, and he loved her. He loved her as she loved him.

Her eyes, though closed, felt teary in a sweet, achingly sweet, way. His mouth was deliciously salty, his tongue rough, and yet smoothly moving along hers.

It'd never felt like this. She'd never felt like this. So open, so bare, so raw before him in such a way that she wanted him to have her. She wanted him to take her – the real her – the wordless, thoughtless her, and she wanted to have him.

His large hands ran over her skin, over her breasts, cupping her face, and then at last gripping her thighs. She pressed against him, hard, and wrapped an arm around his neck.

Gently, so very, very gently, he somehow turned her up and over, so she was flat against the bed, his body covering hers, his mouth still kissing hers lightly and then deeply, tasting and then devouring in no particular pattern, in no particular reason or rhythm, in only need.

Her legs grew cold as her dress was pushed higher, his hips still between her thighs, but she didn't care. She barely felt the cold, she only felt his flesh, his newly exposed flesh, velvety against her own. He kissed her more insistently, and she knew what was coming. She ached for it. She arched her back, though slowly, for it...and then it happened.

She opened her eyes at the sensation, at their union, and brought a hand to his face. His lovely, lovely face. She saw his eyes, she saw his mouth, she saw the heaviness of his brows...and she saw that her hand was trembling.

When, very slowly, he began to move above her again, he lowered his lips onto hers softly, and it was more than her heart could possibly take.

Silently, she cried. And for the first time in nearly two months, for the first time in nearly a year, her tears were not born of sadness.

* * *

She laid bare beside him in her bed, in her pink bed she'd slept in as a girl. The bed she'd been tucked in to by nannies and the bed she'd come running toward when the pains and struggles of adolescence became unbearable. Now, Cora mused, she'd made love in it. For the first time in her marriage, she had made love.

She tightened the grasp she held of her husband's hand, and he returned it.

They'd been awake for hours now, hours, talking. Well, Cora was talking. About everything. About their baby, about her fears, about her lingering insecurities. And slowly, but in a way that she knew it would, the conversation had come to him...to her father...and she let herself tell him, tell Robert, everything.

Every memory - every wonderful, terrible, inconsequential memory – that her tongue could find, she talked of. She talked, and talked, and talked, until at last...there weren't any left. And his name slowly vanished from the air, and just like that, he was gone.

Cora's chest felt cold. He was gone.

After silence, after so much poignant silence, it was Robert who talked next.

"He spoke to me...on our wedding day."

Cora, her eyes trained up and on the canopy of her bed, swallowed. She listened.

"He said, he'd never forgive me for many things, for...the things that I and that we...we had done. But, but should I make her happy - should I make _you_ happy - I would know what it was to be wealthy." She felt him move his hand around hers, grasping tighter still. "I wasn't certain at the time of what he meant. Ashamedly, I thought perhaps some sort of incentive, some sort of monetary reward in exchange for your happiness, but no. No. Soon I realized...I realized he meant you. You..." Her hand was pulled up and over toward Robert, and she looked to him, watching him as she melted at the warmth of his lips on the back of her hand. She let loose a shaky breath. "You, my darling. Thank God for you."


	7. Chapter 7

They'd woken at the same time, all wrapped in one another's arms. They'd woken at the same time, and Cora smiled briefly and nestled her face back into his chest, Robert holding her to him.

They talked some more, a little more about Isidore. A little more about what Robert could expect now that Shiva was over...the things they were permitted to do. The things they were not.

And then, another hour later, they'd risen from the bed and gone downstairs to meet everyone else. They'd gone downstairs to partake in the meal that would end Shiva and move into the next phase of mourning for her family.

Cora held his hand as he led her down the stairs.

* * *

"We, the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem, give thanks to You, O Lord, our God." Tobias' voiced boomed around the coral-colored dining room, the steam from their breakfast plates - salmon, eggs, fruits, toast - rising into the morning sunlight that filtered in.

"You, the Omnipresent, our Comforter," he continued; Cora brought her eyes up to him briefly, to where he stood at the head of the table. He looked like Father. "Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, the True Judge. Blessed are You, who in Your infinite wisdom, so decided to take our son, our father, our brother, Isidore."

At his name, everyone around the table fell into a deeper quiet, an introspective quiet, a quiet that incited a sudden image of Father to appear in Cora's mind, and she sighed.

"Thanks and praise be unto You, our God."

Cora allowed her gaze to move back to her uncle, and she watched him, in silence, as he pressed his praying palms harder.

"Am-"

"-We pray for our Isi, Lord."

Everyone seated at the elaborately long table looked at GranMary as she interrupted. Some of Cora's family sat straighter, surprised, but Cora only sighed again. She knew her grandmother. Unlike the sweet, elderly, timid Savta that sat across from her, GranMary, who sat at the far end closest to Harold, would have the last word. GranMary always seemed to find the last word.

"We pray he finds his rest. We pray that those of us left behind...," here she brought her dark eyes to Martha, and then briefly to Harold; Cora tucked her chin, resting her gaze on the fingers she held entwined in her lap."...may those of us who loved him find comfort and healing."

There was a soft silence around the table, Cora noting that Uncle Tobias had sat, his hands folded at his chest reverently. It almost made her warm to think, warm to think that both sides of her family, both faiths were here at this table. Everyone was here at this table, and they were all here for her father. Uncle Tobias, Aunt Annele, and young Hanna. Aunt Ruth and Uncle Frank. Darling Savta. Harold...and her mother.

Her father, the man whose charisma and humor could always bring such different people together, still could do just that. Even in death.

After another few moments of quiet, GranMary's voice permeated the warmth that now filled their grieving hearts.

"In Jesus's name we..."

Then, as if everyone thought the same thing at one time, all eyes went to her, some gazes narrowed and judging.

"...well – _some_ of us – pray."

Again, another silence, but this time it was a bit harder, Martha breaking it with an exasperated sigh. "Ma."

"I said some of us," Mary shook her head. "For goodness sake. Amen. Just say Amen."

An unsure chorus of "Amen" sounded around the table and Cora could hear the faint snickering sigh of her husband beside her. She glanced quickly to her right, and grinned up at him. He was smiling.

Strange, it was strange, what had happened. What had transpired here, what had developed.

Life. A new life. A new life had been born of death.

In looking at her husband, she felt as if they'd started anew. Even in the shadow of death, a death that Cora was sure she'd never quite get over, a death she was sure she'd think of at unexpected moments for the rest of her days, she'd also begun her life anew. A life that would be different from her old one, a life in which she'd know that although things may be left unsaid, it didn't make them any less true. Robert did love her, he had loved her, he still loved her...and perhaps her father knew. After all, her father loved her, too.

Yes, Cora knew, a new life had grown out of the darkness, out of the despair, out of the shouts and the tears and the silences. A new life had grown out of Cora, a life that would strive now to hear the words unsaid.

Looking down into her lap, Cora looked at the hand that had reached to hold hers, the hand that gripped her own in comfort and in strength. She smiled down at it and pulled it closer, closer until his hand was pressed against her abdomen. Her abdomen, the place where, unbeknownst to them, something glimmered. The place where a new life stirred.

A new life they'd just begun.


End file.
